Realm of the Horned Rat
by Eipok
Summary: The world is dead. A verminous tide of chittering ratmen corrupted the Great Vortex and brought their god into the mortal realm. With the thirteenth seat on the Council filled, they set their eyes to the void. What they found there catapulted their civilization forward hundreds of years. They called it Gravity Magic. The rest of the galaxy called it the Mass Effect.
1. Prologue

The world is dead. A verminous tide of chittering ratmen corrupted the Great Vortex and brought their god, the Great Horned Rat, into the mortal realm. With the thirteenth seat on the Council filled, they set their eyes to the void. Their first conquest was Morrslieb, the Chaos Moon. Made of warpstone, that which they coveted most, they sought to claim it for themselves, to fashion new and terrible machines out of its spoils, to bring Skavendom to never before seen heights.

To this end, they fashioned a weapon of untold power, of a magnitude never before seen, to bring Morrslieb and its warpstone to them. They set to work with a ferocity no other race could match, spurred by a greed no other race could fathom, applying all they had ever learned of the world to this one task. Within months, they had created the world's largest ever rocket, and laid within it the most powerful doomsphere ever to be created. They sent this contraption to Morrslieb, and brought it down upon their very heads. Untold millions died that day, and more in the months after. The entire continent of Lustria was made inhospitable by the falling warpstone, though strangely few traces of the Lizardmen remained. A great winter blanketed the entire world, storms larger than any in history laying waste to everything. But the Underempire endured, as it always had and as it always will, and more than that, it thrived. A great war followed, one that saw all the Skaven's remaining enemies either fall, or bend the knee. When the dust settled, figuratively at least, only the Chaos Dwarfs and Norscans remained, though both were almost entire depopulated. Their defiance had cost them dearly, but in the end they had relented.

The Norscans were largely left alone in the Chaos Wastes, left behind by the rapid advancement of Skaven civilization. The Chaos Dwarfs, however with their technological aptitude and industriousness, and most of all their intelligence, saw the genius of what the Skaven had been able to accomplish. Though grudgingly, for both sides, they accepted a role in the Great Horned Rat's new order. They became scribes and engineers, integrated in part into Clan Skryre's think tank, as it were.

The Old Gods maintained relevance however, albeit in surprising ways. As Skavendom changed, so too did their view of the gods, and thus the gods themselves did change. All worshiped the Great Horned Rat, of course, for he was the true embodiment of the whole of Skaven civilization. That still left niche roles for the Four. The Horned Rat represented the destructiveness of disease and the careless embrace of death, the conniving and backstabbing and shortsightedness that results from unchecked ambition; Nurgle represented disease's transformative properties, and the greater cycle of growth and decay; Tzeentch represented the pursuit of knowledge and the importance of change; Khorne represented the simple acts of war and bloodshed, devoid of deeper meaning or intent; and Slaanesh represented the extremes of emotions not oft felt by Skavenkind. Through the Great Horned Rat, Chaos was truly Undivided.

As for Morrslieb, the sheer amount of warpstone boggled even the Skaven's greedy minds. They swarmed across the carcass of the world, reshaping it in their image. For the first time in history, their cities breached the surface, like festering sores. With the climate increasingly unable to support conventional life, let alone life as numerous as the skaven, they knew something had to change.

The Horned Rat knew that if the Skaven were to survive forever, they would have to spread to all corners of the universe. And so, they set their eyes again to the void, this time to the remaining moon, Mannslieb. There, they found an intact Old One listening post, overseen by an active monitor. It took years for Skaven Engineers to unlock its secrets, but it was so very worth it. The technology and information within catapulted Skavendom ahead hundreds of years. Advanced computing, micro and nano fabrication, and finally the most important piece of all, the Mass Effect.

* * *

Author's Note: Well, this is gonna be my first story in a very long time, but I promise to take this one seriously. I've got everything planned out, all I have to do is put words to the page. Gonna try to update this as often as I can, with a mind for maintaining a solid level of quality.

Also, shoutout to my good friend Beastrider9, author of Biomass Effect, who helped me with brainstorming for this story.


	2. Chapter 1

Kite's Nest/Vular/Erszbat

2165CE

It was midday, not a cloud in the sky. Insects were flitting to a fro, the occasional bird flying overhead. A chorus of nature, seemingly complementing the humming of the Batarian at work. The sun shone hot on Gratok's brow as he knelt next to a crop harvester, performing routine maintenance. Sometimes he wondered why these things needed so much maintenance in the first place, but usually he just hummed to himself, letting his hands do what they did best, and enjoying the serenity that came with focus.

He was humming an old folk song, cleaning one of the harvester's heat exchangers, when abruptly the notes turned sour and the world around him went quiet. He stopped humming, yet the sour notes continued someplace inside his head, right behind his eyes. A shadow passed overhead, clouds darkening the sky. But when Gratok looked up, he did not see clouds, he saw ships descending from a sickly green sky. Not a few, but dozens. Not Batarian, either. They were ugly, ungainly things, wreathed in green lightning and adorned with spikes and greebles of unknowable function. An emergency alert blared from his omnitool, startling him out of his stupor. He made to stand, to make it to his house, but by then it was too late. Aliens, unlike any Gratok had ever seen, had descended from the ships, brandishing dangerous looking rifles and even what seemed to be knives and swords, and swarmed like vermin over him faster than he could react. Before he knew what was really going on, he was trussed up like a slave and being hauled into one of the transports. He hoped things weren't as hopeless as they seemed.

* * *

In the capital city of Erszbat, at a military spaceport, SIU Captain Ka'hairal Balak was not having the best day. He and his squad had finished hunting down a particularly dangerous domestic terrorist and were preparing to return home to Khar'shan, when Erszbat had come under attack by a unknown ships. Within hours, the skies were lost to swarms of thousands of fighters. All contact with the outside galaxy had been lost, the comm buoys obviously destroyed. From what he could gather, he knew that this was clearly a slave raid. The enemy fighters were using tactics all too familiar, trying to herd civilians into groups to be picked up en masse. His first priority was to find a defensible location and lay low until they'd taken what they could carry and leave. He was of course confident that the Hegemony's retaliation would be brutal and efficient, and that its citizens and property would be returned home. His second priority would be gather as much information as possible on this new enemy, for when he inevitably returned home.

Given his current location, the best way to accomplish priority one would be to get in contact with the spaceport's commanding officer and help bolster the defenses in preparation for the impending ground attack. Unfortunately, all he and his team could really do to that end would be to add their numbers to the mix, so they headed to reinforce the entryway.

Upon arriving, it quickly became clear that this was not, in fact, just a slave raid. In the distance, just beyond the maximum range of the base's emplacements were three transports of ludicrous size. Slave raids didn't typically involve troop transports the size of office buildings, and in fact the slavers normally didn't attempt to take military installations at all, preferring to destroy them from orbit or ignore them. This was clearly an invasion, and the invaders intended to stay. Soon enough, the transports started disembarking troops, those troops immediately charging toward the base. Looking through his scope, they were ugly things, covered in fur but with scaled tails, with long snouts, sharp claws, and large buck teeth likely evolved for gnawing through bone. They were also entirely unarmored, clad in rags, and armed only with pistols and what seemed to be swords and spears. They hadn't even finished disembarking and already there were thousands of them.

The base's guns were firing as quickly as they could, but he could already tell they simply didn't have enough guns. Soon enough, the aliens entered the range of his soldiers' weapons. By the time the enemy had reached the gate, he alone had racked up 36 kills. He expected things to go smoothly from there, after all, it would simply be a matter of aiming at the front of the gate and firing. What he did not expect was for the aliens to start exploding on their own when they reached the gate. Now things started to make sense. This hadn't been a wave of soldiers, or even cannon fodder, this had been a wave of slaves, implanted with explosives, sent at the base like guided missiles.

Quickly reassessing his priorities, given that this was clearly not just a slave raid and that the base was definitely going to fall, he figured his next best move was to get his men out of this clusterfuck and try to organize a resistance to the coming occupation. Sending orders over his squad's private comms for his men to retreat to the airfield, he peaced out. Leaving the rest of the defenders to their fates, they commandeered a transport and lived to fight another day.

* * *

When contact was lost with Erszbat, the Hegemony was worried. Immediately, a fleet was assembled to investigate, and the readiness level was elevated throughout Hegemony territory. Within a week, a fleet of fifteen ships arrived in Vular, prepared - they thought - for anything they might find.

Sensor returns showed a positively massive fleet of about two dozen light frigates, split into eight packs of three each, blockading Erszbat. In geosynchronous orbit above the largest city on the planet was not only the most bizarre looking ship anyone had ever seen, but also the largest, with it being 3 kilometers across. It was shaped like a torus, on the inside of which were three spurs, each one connecting to the point of a triangular command module, and on the outside of the torus were massive hangars. As for the planet, what was happening was clear. This was a slave raid, the largest the Hegemony had ever witnessed, and that said something.

The order was quickly given to close range to Erszbat to get more recent sensor data. Despite the enemy mothership's considerable size, it paradoxically didn't look particularly well made, and there was little chance that the combined efforts of the Batarian fleet couldn't handle it. When the fleet dropped out of FTL thirty light-seconds from the planet, they made to check their sensors. The enemy ships were indeed still there, and in fact had not moved. A little over minute later, they noticed that lightning had begun to wreathe the enemy mothership's hull, and half the light frigates were making to intercept them. Just as the Batarians finished making their final preparations for battle, lightning seemed to lash out at them from the enemy command ship. The Batarian fleet scattered, of course, but as if it was seeking them out, the lightning hit nonetheless.

To the command cruiser of the fleet, it was less that the ship was under attack, and more that the very air inside was suddenly made of lightning. Eldritch energy flung itself from the electronics of the ship, seemingly seeking the eyes of one particular Batarian, the commander. Shooting past his optic nerves, into the deepest part of him, it burned his soul from within. His flesh seared and blistered, popping like sick boils as the baleful lightning danced wickedly across his skin, stimulating every single pain receptor it could find. His body contorted and twitched painfully as his eyes boiled from his sockets. Then, as the lightning jumped from his body to those of the nearest crewmen, he exploded so violently that the pressure wave knocked those around him to the ground. Within seconds, the entire crew had suffered the same fate, the cruiser left a lifeless hulk as the redundant electronics took over.

Already scattering in evasive manoeuvres, and now devoid of command, it took precious seconds for the fleet to try to regroup. It was too late. The enemy was upon them, mere hundreds of kilometers away, each enemy ship wreathed in the same lightning as the mothership. The frigates of the fleet were hit the worst. Their very hulls turned against the crew, the temperature within the ships rising sharply until the people inside boiled in their skin. The two remaining cruisers, however, were able to escape into FTL, the lightning from the enemy only leaving deep furrows in the hulls. They left the system as quickly as they were able, committed to warning the Hegemony about the alien menace.

* * *

Tune in next week for the next exciting episode of Realm of the Skaven! Will Balak survive? With the Skaven discover hand sanitizer? What happened to that poor commander's soul? How did the lightning hit a ship 30 light-seconds away? And what DOES a Skaven mothership taste like with sprinkles?


	3. Chapter 2

The Known World/Lustria

2065 - Year of the Great Catastrophe

Lord Mazdamundi gripped his chest, shaken to his very core by what he had seen in his visions. The Great Plan was over, the Old Ones' designs for this world had crumbled. The Lizardmen had failed. His people's only hope was to restore the Old Ones' great vehicles to their former glory and leave before the Great Catastrophe that would inevitably come. He immediately commanded Qro-ekop, his loyal Skink Priest aide, to summon the other Mage-Priests and Kroq-gar.

It took months, but the great Temple Ships were finally awake, and just in time. His spies told him of the work that was under way by the Skaven. The final preparations for the evacuation of the entire Lizardmen people from the Known World began. Within weeks, nearly the entire Lizardmen population was embarked in the great Temple Ships at the heart of the great cities. Those that remained would not live to see another day.

"It is time," rumbled Mazdamundi. With those three words, the command was sent to every city in the Lizardmen civilization, and as one, the Temple Ships at their hearts lifted off the ground for the first time since the Old Ones' arrival to this world. Almost immediately after they left the surface, Morrslieb started cracking apart. With a panicked gesture, Mazdamundi bade his civilization into the Realm of Chaos, their destination a world described by the Old Ones as a paradise.

They arrived years later, not above a paradise world but instead somewhere shrouded in a red so dark it was almost black. In the distance, they could barely make out a great light. Knowing something had gone wrong, but not knowing exactly what, Mazdamundi entered a meditative state to commune with the cosmos. What he found was bizarre. They had arrived in the correct system, albeit the wrong planet, but not only was their target destination populated with sapients, the very moons of the gas giant they had arrived within were as well.

Knowing that acting rashly could very well bring about their extinction, after having come so far, he sought guidance from the writings of the Old Ones themselves.

* * *

Annos Basin/Pranas/Halegeuse

2068 - 97 years before the Skaven invasion of the Vular system

In one of the moons orbiting the gas giant Halegeuse, monitoring the autonomous mining platforms in Halegeuse's atmosphere, Gipok Aenok suddenly noticed a minute but abrupt shift in Halegeuse's mass coming from a specific region of the cloud layer, and it wasn't going away. He decided to call up one of his co-workers to confirm, before he sent this up to his superiors.

"Hey, Zustaf, I'm looking at the readings from mining drone HGC-5, and it seems to be seeing something funky in the cloud layer there. Can you get one of your drones over there for confirmation?"

"Define funky, Gipok."

"The first law of thermodynamics seems to have just gotten bent over its own desk, cause there's some shit there that wasn't before, yet nothing entered the atmosphere. It's almost like it just appeared out of nowhere."

"Seems like our definitions of funky are similar enough I guess. I'll check it out."

A few minutes passed, when Gipok's comm chimed again.

"Yeah, Gipok, I'm looking at the readings from mining drone HGC-6, and it definitely seems to be seeing something funky in the cloud layer. Damn near has the mass of a mountain, too. You sure no one saw an asteroid enter the atmosphere or something?"

"Positive, Zustaf. _Someone_ would have noticed that."

"Right. We should probably tell the bosses, shouldn't we."

"Probably."

* * *

Mazdamundi knew his people had been discovered by the locals, from the distinct feeling of being watched that was conferred by his sixth sense. Tracing the intent to its origin, he felt the simultaneous curiosity and panic, coming from a mind almost his polar opposite. Its thoughts moved like a school of fish scattering in the wake of a predator, but not out of fear, merely this was the way this creature _was_.

This would likely be the best opportunity he'd have to ensure a peaceful contact, for he knew that the survival of the Lizardmen, for once, was dependent on peaceful coexistence. This was not an enemy they could afford to make, not with the vast disparity of numbers given what he could feel of the garden world in this system.

Without even turning to Qro-ekop, he psychically commanded the Skink Priest to assemble and lead a cohort of Skinks, supplemented by a squad of Temple Guard. They would take one of the awakened void ships and orbit the moon the creatures he had sensed were inhabiting, and wait for the hyperactive ones to make contact. To that end, he provided Qro-ekop with an Orrery and stacks of tablets upon which were carved the basics of Lizardmen language and mathematics. Qro-ekop dutifully accepted his orders and began administering the plan.

* * *

Annos Basin/Pranas/Sur'Kesh/Halegeuse Corporation Headquarters

"I'm telling you, we need to inform Dalatrass Narra. She has to be made aware of this! Our probes show some sort of fleet - composed of a nearly a hundred frigate-weight vessels completely devoid of element zero, as well as as many dreadnought-weight ships as the Asari - just literally appeared out of nowhere, into the cloud layer of a gas giant. It could be the most important discovery since the Citadel! With this, we could finally give the Union the upper hand over the Asari!"

"And I'm telling you that you're losing sight of what's really important. This is our opportunity to make ourselves a true galactic player. We go to the Dalatrass, and this is out of our hands for good. Yes, we have an obligation to the Union, but we have a greater obligation to our family, our shareholders."

"And I'M telling YOU, YOU'RE ALL MORONS!" shouted a third voice. The two stared at him, eyes wide and mouths agape. "This isn't about duty, whether it be to family or Union. This is about survival. We keep this to ourselves, and you can say goodbye to everything, and say hello to an STG cell on a planet you've never heard of. Jails suck. An STG jail will make you yearn for a Batarian one. I've no doubt the STG already knows about this mystery fleet, and I for one like my life too much to leave it behind. We need to go to the very top. We need to tell Councilor Lurin."

SIlence fell across the room as the others realized he was right. The prospect of rotting, or worse, in an STG Prison was on none of their lists of priorities. They called the Councilor, even knowing that the STG probably already knew. Unbeknownst to them, similar machinations were unfolding aboard the alien ships in question.

* * *

Lurin Narra, the Salarian Councilor, knew what had to be done. His Dalatrass Nagante, his beloved sister, had had to be made aware of the news. Upon learning of the situation, she had given him three clear priorities: get it done well, done quickly, and most importantly keep it quiet from the other Councilors.

To cover all the bases, he would likely need a linguist, a mathematician, a physicist, and a biologist. They'd all also need to be as trustworthy as possible, so he'd want to start by looking for candidates in the STG. He spent the next few hours finding and reviewing dossiers of potential candidates, until he was rudely shaken out of his work by his omnitool alerting him to a priority message. Upon opening the message, a video started playing, showing some sort of craft leaving the atmosphere of Halegeuse and heading toward the nearest moon. Knowing he had no time left, he quickly checked his list of potential candidates and selected those which he felt most confident about, with an emphasis on those closest to Sur'kesh.

* * *

STG Major Ratik Hilban quickly appraised his team one last time, before their shuttle docked with the alien ship to meet these aliens face-to-face. The aliens in question had left Halegeuse and entered the nearest moon's orbit a day before, and had seemingly done nothing else other than open their ship's airlock and wait. His team consisted of four other members apart from his own men: Japol Suhe, the physicist; Lasant Teja, the Mathematician; Caetum Saemnor, the Linguist; and finally Lordrin Solus, the Biologist. While he had never met any of them before, he had heard of all of them by their reputations within the STG. He decided to ask if they had any insight into the aliens they were about to be meeting.

"Right, what do we know about these aliens? I don't want to be going in blind," asked Ratik.

"Well, I'm afraid we will be," Lasant responded.

"Not entirely accurate, actually. We know they do not use the mass effect, that their ships seem to be made out of some kind of stone denser than even basalt, and we can infer they don't have radios," said Japol.

"How do they communicate between ships if they don't have radio? It can't be optically, otherwise we'd have noticed," asked Caetum.

"Maybe they're a hive mind?" said Lordrin.

"Let me get this straight: We don't actually know anything about them," said Ratik.

"Well, yeah, but…" every scientist said nearly in unison.

"I'm not interested in buts, I'm interested in facts, and if we don't have any, we might as well get on with this. Pilot, take us in!"

Silence descended upon the team as everyone checked their hardsuits for leaks and prepared for disembarkation. Suddenly, the pilot chimed up over the intercom.

"I'm afraid I'm not gonna be able to actually dock with them. Best I can do is match their delta-v. Hope you're all up to date on your EVA training!"

* * *

With the team fully inside the alien airlock, and suddenly under what seemed to be a full G, the airlock's outer door closed and the airlock's pressure started to increase. Caetum had barely enough time to notice what seemed to be pictograms on the inner airlock door before it opened and the team was met by a pair of rather large reptilian bipeds. The words "rather large" might have been a severe understatement. The aliens must have been around eight feet tall, they were clad in shiny but primitive metal armor, and rather than helmets they wore the skulls of some even larger creatures.

After a quick appraisal, almost as if they were sizing the team up, the massive reptilian aliens stood to either side of the doorway and gestured them inside.

"We uh, we sure these are space aliens? They don't look very space-y to me, more like… bronze age aliens, if that's even a thing," said Caetum as the team made their way inside the ship..

"Could be culturally significant, emblematic of rank perhaps," pointed out Lordrin.

Entering a large room, they were greeted by a very different sight to the guards they had first seen. Small creatures, each about 5 feet tall, all working intently at various stations placed around a platform in the center of the room. They were, Caetum thought, positively adorable. Upon that platform, on a very fancy looking stone chair, sat another such creature, this one garbed in intricately woven robes and crowned with a brightly colored feathered headdress.

He noticed it was staring back at him, with eyes as big as a baby's head. Suddenly, quick as a salarian child, it got off its chair and darted toward them, stopping barely three feet away from him. Then, almost paradoxically slowly, with one hand making a placating gesture, it reached its other hand into its robes and pulled out an ornately carved stone orb with crystal inlays. Gesturing upward with its free hand, the inlays began to glow and a holographic projection appeared above their heads. It showed a highly detailed map of a solar system, one planet of which glowed a bright blue. The creature pointed to the planet in question, and the projection zoomed in to show it and its two moons, one muddy red and the other a bright green. Then the green moon began to crumble, fragments heading toward the surface of the planet. Zooming in further, this time to one of the continents on the planet, it showed cities rising from the ground and then as one, they disappeared into what could only be described as wormholes made of colors that did not have names. After that the projection collapsed and the creature returned the orb to within his robes.

Collecting himself after what they had witnessed, mind working even faster than normal, he dimly noticed the alien directing two of the larger ones to bring a crate filled with stone tablets to his group. After setting it down, the two large aliens returned to their positions on either side of what was obviously their leader. The leader then bent over the edge of the crate and, after some searching, picked out a tablet and handed it to Lordrin. Almost immediately, Lordrin activated his omnitool and took a scan of the tablet. The alien merely stared at Lordrin with its head tilted, before turning back to the crate and distributing more of the tablets, one to each member of the team.

In return, Radik stepped forward and carefully produced a simple electronic tablet, one that Caetum knew had the Salarian language and maths, as well as various helpful codex entries. After showing the alien leader how to use the device, which simply involved swiping to the left or right to change pages, Radik returned to the center of the group and gave the order to go through and scan the rest of the tablets in the crate.

* * *

A/N: I know I said we'd find out whether the Skaven would discover hand sanitizer this week, and I will, but I needed to get this out there.


End file.
